Just last week two coal-fired power plants in Southwestern Pennsylvania -- Mitchell and Hatfield's Ferry -- announced they would shut down by Oct. 9 rather than face expensive work to bring them up to safety standards.

Peabody's 1,600-megawatt pulverized-coal plant is being built in Lively Grove, where the the "Big Shake" of 1811, in nearby New Madrid, Missouri, altered the very waterways that will feed into the Peabody mine-mouth operation.